Syrian Civil War from 2011-2023 in Guardian Headlines

Introduction

The aim of the project is to observe the change and the reflections of the war in the world by analysing the Guardian news headlines from the beginning of the Syrian civil war to the present day (2011-2023). The data set is taken from the Guardian. In total 23,617 headlines are found for the 12 years period. Some of the articles were related to different topics such as earthquake but majority of them related to refugees and certain attacks in Europe.

Research Question

  • How the headlines related to Syrian Civil War has changed throughout the time (2011-2023)?

Hypotheses

  • While there was a softer discourse in the first couple of years of the war, the discourse changed after 2015 in the opposite direction.
  • In particular, the unidentified “terrorist” attacks in Europe in recent years have been associated with the Syrian war and refugees.

##Data Analysis and Visualisations

2. Data Visualisation 1: Number of headlines by the dates (01-01-2011 to 15-04-2023)

2. Data Visualisation 2. Keywords

top_headline_dates keywords
2015-11 paris , isis , attacks , airstrikes, refugees
2015-09 refugees, refugee , crisis , says , syrian
2013-09 chemical, weapons , us , obama , un
2014-09 isis , us , strikes, iraq , air
2015-12 isis , airstrikes, war , labour , says
2016-01 isis , refugee, uk , says , us

2. Data Visualisation 3. Word Cloud

## $xlog
## [1] FALSE
## 
## $ylog
## [1] FALSE
## 
## $adj
## [1] 0.5
## 
## $ann
## [1] TRUE
## 
## $ask
## [1] FALSE
## 
## $bg
## [1] "white"
## 
## $bty
## [1] "o"
## 
## $cex
## [1] 1
## 
## $cex.axis
## [1] 1
## 
## $cex.lab
## [1] 1
## 
## $cex.main
## [1] 1.2
## 
## $cex.sub
## [1] 1
## 
## $col
## [1] "black"
## 
## $col.axis
## [1] "black"
## 
## $col.lab
## [1] "black"
## 
## $col.main
## [1] "black"
## 
## $col.sub
## [1] "black"
## 
## $crt
## [1] 0
## 
## $err
## [1] 0
## 
## $family
## [1] ""
## 
## $fg
## [1] "black"
## 
## $fig
## [1] 0 1 0 1
## 
## $fin
## [1] 6.999999 4.999999
## 
## $font
## [1] 1
## 
## $font.axis
## [1] 1
## 
## $font.lab
## [1] 1
## 
## $font.main
## [1] 2
## 
## $font.sub
## [1] 1
## 
## $lab
## [1] 5 5 7
## 
## $las
## [1] 0
## 
## $lend
## [1] "round"
## 
## $lheight
## [1] 1
## 
## $ljoin
## [1] "round"
## 
## $lmitre
## [1] 10
## 
## $lty
## [1] "solid"
## 
## $lwd
## [1] 1
## 
## $mai
## [1] 0 0 0 0
## 
## $mar
## [1] 5.1 4.1 4.1 2.1
## 
## $mex
## [1] 1
## 
## $mfcol
## [1] 1 1
## 
## $mfg
## [1] 1 1 1 1
## 
## $mfrow
## [1] 1 1
## 
## $mgp
## [1] 3 1 0
## 
## $mkh
## [1] 0.001
## 
## $new
## [1] TRUE
## 
## $oma
## [1] 0 0 0 0
## 
## $omd
## [1] 0 1 0 1
## 
## $omi
## [1] 0 0 0 0
## 
## $pch
## [1] 1
## 
## $pin
## [1] 5.759999 3.159999
## 
## $plt
## [1] 0.08857144 0.91142856 0.18400002 0.81599998
## 
## $ps
## [1] 12
## 
## $pty
## [1] "m"
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## $smo
## [1] 1
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## $srt
## [1] 0
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## $tck
## [1] NA
## 
## $tcl
## [1] -0.5
## 
## $usr
## [1] -0.256  1.256 -0.040  1.040
## 
## $xaxp
## [1] 0 1 5
## 
## $xaxs
## [1] "r"
## 
## $xaxt
## [1] "s"
## 
## $xpd
## [1] FALSE
## 
## $yaxp
## [1] 0 1 5
## 
## $yaxs
## [1] "r"
## 
## $yaxt
## [1] "s"
## 
## $ylbias
## [1] 0.2

2. Data Visualisation 3. Interactive Headline Plot

## 'data.frame':    148 obs. of  3 variables:
##  $ Date    : Date, format: "2011-01-01" "2011-02-01" ...
##  $ n       : int  51 45 71 101 115 136 68 113 77 88 ...
##  $ keywords:List of 148
##   ..$ : NULL
##   ..$ : NULL
##   ..$ : NULL
##   ..$ : NULL
##   ..$ : NULL
##   ..$ : NULL
##   ..$ : NULL
##   ..$ : NULL
##   ..$ : NULL
##   ..$ : NULL
##   ..$ : NULL
##   ..$ : NULL
##   ..$ : NULL
##   ..$ : chr  "syrian" "homs" "un" "assad" ...
##   ..$ : NULL
##   ..$ : NULL
##   ..$ : NULL
##   ..$ : NULL
##   ..$ : chr  "syrian" "assad" "crisis" "aleppo" ...
##   ..$ : NULL
##   ..$ : NULL
##   ..$ : NULL
##   ..$ : NULL
##   ..$ : NULL
##   ..$ : NULL
##   ..$ : NULL
##   ..$ : NULL
##   ..$ : NULL
##   ..$ : chr  "syrian" "us" "crisis" "rebels" ...
##   ..$ : chr  "g8" "syrian" "cameron" "us" ...
##   ..$ : NULL
##   ..$ : chr  "chemical" "intervention" "attack" "us" ...
##   ..$ : chr  "chemical" "weapons" "us" "obama" ...
##   ..$ : NULL
##   ..$ : NULL
##   ..$ : NULL
##   ..$ : chr  "talks" "syrian" "peace" "geneva" ...
##   ..$ : NULL
##   ..$ : NULL
##   ..$ : NULL
##   ..$ : NULL
##   ..$ : chr  "iraq" "isis" "us" "crisis" ...
##   ..$ : NULL
##   ..$ : chr  "isis" "iraq" "us" "james" ...
##   ..$ : chr  "isis" "us" "strikes" "iraq" ...
##   ..$ : chr  "isis" "us" "kobani" "uk" ...
##   ..$ : chr  "isis" "us" "uk" "terror" ...
##   ..$ : NULL
##   ..$ : chr  "isis" "paris" "attacks" "charlie" ...
##   ..$ : chr  "isis" "war" "uk" "mohammed" ...
##   ..$ : chr  "isis" "us" "war" "live" ...
##   ..$ : NULL
##   ..$ : NULL
##   ..$ : chr  "isis" "says" "attack" "tunisia" ...
##   ..$ : chr  "isis" "uk" "cameron" "british" ...
##   ..$ : NULL
##   ..$ : chr  "refugees" "refugee" "crisis" "says" ...
##   ..$ : chr  "us" "says" "syrian" "isis" ...
##   ..$ : chr  "paris" "isis" "attacks" "airstrikes" ...
##   ..$ : chr  "isis" "airstrikes" "war" "labour" ...
##   ..$ : chr  "isis" "refugee" "uk" "says" ...
##   ..$ : chr  "syrian" "eu" "says" "uk" ...
##   ..$ : chr  "isis" "brussels" "attacks" "syrian" ...
##   ..$ : chr  "refugees" "obama" "us" "isis" ...
##   ..$ : chr  "isis" "war" "refugees" "refugee" ...
##   ..$ : chr  "jo" "cox" "says" "eu" ...
##   ..$ : chr  "us" "isis" "war" "iraq" ...
##   ..$ : NULL
##   ..$ : chr  "us" "syrian" "trump" "refugees" ...
##   ..$ : chr  "aleppo" "us" "russia" "trump" ...
##   ..$ : chr  "trump" "us" "isis" "russia" ...
##   ..$ : chr  "aleppo" "uk" "says" "russia" ...
##   ..$ : chr  "trump" "ban" "trump's" "travel" ...
##   ..$ : chr  "trump" "ban" "travel" "us" ...
##   ..$ : NULL
##   ..$ : chr  "trump" "trump's" "us" "attack" ...
##   ..$ : NULL
##   ..$ : chr  "trump" "us" "climate" "paris" ...
##   ..$ : NULL
##   ..$ : NULL
##   ..$ : NULL
##   ..$ : NULL
##   ..$ : NULL
##   ..$ : NULL
##   ..$ : NULL
##   ..$ : NULL
##   ..$ : NULL
##   ..$ : chr  "us" "trump" "strikes" "may" ...
##   ..$ : NULL
##   ..$ : NULL
##   ..$ : NULL
##   ..$ : NULL
##   ..$ : NULL
##   ..$ : NULL
##   ..$ : NULL
##   ..$ : NULL
##   ..$ : NULL
##   ..$ : NULL
##   ..$ : NULL
##   .. [list output truncated]

Results & Conclusion

In this exercise, we analysed the changes in the headlines in the Guardian newspaper since the beginning of the Syrian civil war (2011). Out of a total of 23617 news headlines, we noticed 39 dates that we came across most frequently in news headlines about Syria. On the top of the list, in which Syria was mentioned the most, November 2015. Surprisingly, the date was related to the Paris attacks (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/November_2015_Paris_attacks). The assaults, according to French President François Hollande, were an act of war by Islamic State and they were planned in Syria and organised by a terrorist cell in Belgium. The attackers were born in France and Belgium but also fought in Syria and they returned to France through flow of migrants and refugees from Syria. We could also argue from today that after these attacks, the policies and political discourse towards Syrian refugees and migrants have radically changed.